CryptoCow 💉x 7 #Vivele-LongLiveCanada.🇨🇦

Markham Hislop (@politicalham) is a Canadian energy and climate journalist and commentator. His substack and related NYT oped are sobering realities for all regarding of which side of the 49th you are on in North America. x.com/CowCrypto/stat… x.com/CowCrypto/stat…

It’s only hilarious if you think US allies aren’t important so gratuitously insulting them is funny US conservatives used to know this. I worked for the GOP in the 90s, & we knew this MAGA is intellectually reduced to this bc it’s all about clicks and online dunks and grifting

@hahellyer I couldn't agree more. x.com/rosenthal_jon/…

We’re likely to hear a lot more about three small Gulf islands in the coming period—as Donald Trump and others focus on securing the Strait of Hormuz. Most people have never heard of them. So here’s a concise thread on what they are, where they are, and why they matter. 🧵

JUST IN: Iran is charging $2 million per tanker to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The Financial Times reported the payment. The IRGC confirms it by radio. And the world’s most important chokepoint has been converted from a military blockade into a toll road. The mechanism is precise. A tanker operator contacts intermediaries. The intermediaries negotiate with the IRGC. A fee is agreed, reportedly up to $2 million per voyage. Payment is made in cash, cryptocurrency, or barter. The vessel receives clearance. The IRGC hails the tanker on VHF radio, verifies its AIS transponder data, and grants passage. The tanker transits. It arrives. Roughly 89 to 90 vessels, including 16 oil tankers, successfully transited between March 1 and March 15 under some form of IRGC clearance according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence. Not all of them paid. Some were Iranian or allied ships. Some were Indian tankers that received diplomatic safe passage after government-to-government negotiations. Some were shadow fleet operators running dark with transponders off. But the Financial Times report confirms that at least one tanker operator paid the toll explicitly. The commercial precedent now exists. The $2 million sits on top of war-risk insurance that has surged to 3 to 5 percent of hull value where coverage exists at all. A VLCC valued at $120 million pays $3.6 to $6 million in war-risk premium for a seven-day single-voyage policy. Add the $2 million toll. Add the quadrupled charter rate of up to $800,000 per day. The total cost of moving a single cargo of crude through Hormuz now exceeds what it cost to move an entire fleet through the strait six months ago. Every dollar of that cost arrives at the consumer. The toll does not stay on the water. It enters the price of every barrel, every LNG cargo, every tonne of urea, every container of pharmaceuticals that the tanker carries. The $2 million is not a bribe. It is a tax levied by the IRGC on global commerce, collected at the narrowest point of the world’s most concentrated energy transit route, and passed through to four billion people downstream. The strategic innovation is that Iran has found a way to fund its war effort through the war itself. The IRGC closed the strait. The closure created scarcity. The scarcity created desperation. The desperation created willingness to pay. The $2 million per voyage funds the same provincial commands whose sealed packets created the closure. The feedback loop is self-financing: the blockade generates the revenue that sustains the blockade. The United States will frame this as state-sponsored extortion funding terrorism. The sanctions response is predictable: penalties on operators who pay, expanded designations on intermediaries, accelerated naval escorts under the six-allies pledge. But the enforcement faces a paradox. If the US sanctions every operator who pays the toll, it removes the only vessels currently moving oil through Hormuz. The molecules that are getting through, even at $2 million per transit, would stop entirely. The toll is extortion. The extortion is also the only functioning supply mechanism. The IRGC did not just close the strait. It reopened it selectively, on its terms, at its price. The blockade was the leverage. The toll is the monetisation. And the distinction between a military operation and a protection racket has collapsed into a radio frequency and a bank transfer. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

JUST IN: The United States approved $23.5 billion in arms sales to three Gulf allies in a single day. Emergency waivers bypassed congressional review. The weapons are shipping to the countries whose refineries are burning. The announced packages totalled $16.5 billion. UAE received approximately $8.4 billion in missiles, drones, radars, F-16 munitions and upgrades, THAAD radar components, and anti-drone systems. Kuwait received roughly $8 billion in Lower Tier Air and Missile Defence Sensor radars. Jordan received $70.5 million in aircraft and munitions support. The unannounced packages added another $7 billion. The Wall Street Journal, citing officials, reported that the UAE received $5.6 billion in Patriot PAC-3 missiles and $1.32 billion in CH-47 Chinook helicopters through expansions of existing contracts that did not require public disclosure. Twenty-three point five billion dollars in one day. Emergency waivers. Three countries. While their energy infrastructure burns. The timing is not incidental. It is the mechanism. President Trump said no troops anywhere. The Pentagon is discussing Kharg Island ground forces. Bessent is tracking defections and freezing Iranian bank accounts. Six allies just pledged Hormuz support. And now the weapons pipeline is open at a scale that makes the $200 billion supplemental look like the air war budget while the $23.5 billion is the ground defence budget, distributed to allies who will operate the systems that America will not operate itself. This is outsourced deterrence. America strikes Iranian military targets from the air. Gulf states defend their own refineries, gas fields, LNG terminals, and desalination plants with American weapons on the ground. The arrangement eliminates the political cost of American casualties while maintaining the industrial benefit of American arms production. RTX, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin are the contractors. Their stocks reacted accordingly. The Patriot PAC-3 is the system that matters most. It intercepts the ballistic missiles that Iran has been firing at Gulf energy infrastructure since March 2. The UAE’s Shah and Habshan gas complex went to zero production partly because missile interception debris damaged the facility. A Patriot battery does not prevent the strike. It prevents the warhead from reaching the target. The debris still falls. The debris paradox, where successful interception still shuts down production, is not solved by more interceptors. It is solved by intercepting further from the target, which requires more radars, more launchers, and more missiles. The $5.6 billion Patriot package is the answer to the debris paradox at industrial scale. The Chinooks are the logistics layer. Heavy-lift helicopters that move personnel, equipment, and supplies to damaged facilities, offshore platforms, and forward operating bases. When a refinery is hit, the repair crews arrive by Chinook. When a gas field goes offline, the assessment teams fly in by Chinook. The helicopter is not a weapon. It is the supply chain for the weapons and the repair chain for the infrastructure. The THAAD radar components extend detection range against ballistic missiles at higher altitudes and longer distances. The anti-drone systems address the Mosaic Doctrine’s primary delivery mechanism: cheap, numerous, autonomous drones launched from 31 provincial commands. The F-16 upgrades keep the UAE’s existing air fleet operationally current against evolving Iranian countermeasures. Every system addresses a specific Iranian capability that has already been demonstrated. Patriots for ballistic missiles. THAAD radars for early warning. Anti-drone for Mosaic swarms. Chinooks for damage response. F-16 upgrades for air superiority. The $23.5 billion is not a speculative arms purchase. It is the Gulf states buying the defensive architecture that the last 21 days proved they did not have enough of. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Japan’s Prime Minister arrived in Washington with $550 billion in investment commitments. President Trump greeted her with Pearl Harbor. A Japanese reporter asked why Japan was not told before the strikes on Iran. Trump responded: “Why didn’t you tell ME about PEARL HARBOR?!” Then: “You believe in surprise much more-so than us!” The room absorbed it. Takaichi, standing beside him, absorbed it. And then the summit continued because both leaders understood the transaction underneath the provocation. Japan gets 90 percent of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz. America stations 45,000 troops on Japanese soil. The constitution America wrote in 1947 is the reason Japan cannot send warships to defend the strait that carries its energy. Trump knows this. The Pearl Harbor line was not a diplomatic gaffe. It was a reminder of who holds the asymmetry. Takaichi told Trump directly what Japan can and cannot do. Article 9 renounces war as a sovereign right and prohibits offensive military forces. The 2014 Abe Cabinet reinterpretation permits limited collective self-defence only when an armed attack on a close ally threatens Japan’s survival. The 2015 Legislation for Peace and Security requires cabinet approval, Diet authorisation, and case-by-case determination. A Hormuz escort mission does not meet the survival-threatening threshold under current interpretation. Takaichi confirmed Japan has no plans to send warships. What Japan offered instead was everything else. The first tranche of a $550 billion investment framework: a $36 billion package including a natural gas power plant in Ohio for AI data centres, a deepwater oil export facility in Texas, and a synthetic industrial diamond plant in Georgia. An additional $100 billion in projects was signalled, including copper smelting, liquid crystal display manufacturing, and nuclear power reactors. A critical minerals and rare earths cooperation framework was signed to reduce dependence on China. Japan joined the Golden Dome missile defence initiative. Intelligence-sharing was expanded. Missile coproduction was advanced. Japan’s record $58 billion defence budget and loosened lethal weapons export rules were highlighted as alignment. Japan delivered investment, minerals, defence technology, and diplomatic solidarity. Japan did not deliver warships. And Trump accepted the trade because the $550 billion matters more to the American economy than a destroyer in the Persian Gulf. The six-allies pledge adds context. Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, every one of which said some version of “not our war” in the first week, issued a joint statement committing to “appropriate efforts” for safe passage through Hormuz. Germany’s Pistorius said it was not their war 48 hours before signing the pledge. Trump’s “no free rides” doctrine converted refusal into compliance in two days. But the pledge commits to “appropriate efforts,” not warships. The language is deliberately vague because the constitutional limits that bind Japan also constrain the political limits that bind Europe. The paradox at the centre of the summit is the paradox at the centre of the alliance system. Japan depends on Hormuz more than any other major economy. Japan cannot defend Hormuz because of a constitution America authored. America demands Japan step up. Japan offers money, minerals, and missiles instead of ships. Trump accepts because the money funds American industrial capacity while the strait remains closed regardless of whether Japanese destroyers are present. Ninety percent of Japan’s oil. Zero Japanese warships. Five hundred and fifty billion dollars. One constitution. And the strait that all of it revolves around is still closed. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

We only get around 75 years to live… if we’re lucky. And Trump has taken 10 of those years from our peace. That’s not small. That’s a huge part of our life gone.

@mark_slapinski Let him try.

BREAKING: Netanyahu is calling for a GROUND INVASION of Iran.

Carney proved you don't need to be tall or jacked to make women go crazy over you.

A US F-35 took fire over Iran yesterday and landed. The pilot walked away. That sentence contains two stories the world will argue about for years. CENTCOM confirmed the aircraft sustained damage during a combat mission over Iranian territory on March 19. The pilot made an emergency landing at a regional US air base in the Middle East. No ejection. Stable condition. The aircraft is intact enough to be examined. The IRGC claimed responsibility and released video purporting to show a surface-to-air missile tracking and striking the jet. The video’s authenticity is under scrutiny. An urgent investigation is underway. The first story is survivability. The F-35 was designed to operate in the most contested airspace on Earth. It took a hit from whatever Iranian system engaged it and the pilot brought it home. No fifth-generation aircraft has ever demonstrated that capability in combat against a state-level integrated air defence network. The F-117 that was shot down over Serbia in 1999 crashed. The Israeli F-16 downed by Syrian air defence in 2018 was lost. This F-35 absorbed damage and landed. The airframe, the flight control systems, and the pilot’s training all functioned under conditions that have destroyed every previous aircraft in analogous situations. If this is the worst outcome the Iranian air defence network can produce against the F-35, the aircraft has validated its survivability thesis in the hardest possible test. The second story is detection. The F-35’s stealth architecture is designed to minimise radar cross-section against conventional tracking radars. If the IRGC engaged it with a radar-guided system, the investigation must determine whether the aircraft was detected through a stealth deficiency, a tactical error in flight profile, or an advanced Iranian sensor capability that US intelligence had not fully characterised. If the engagement used electro-optical or infrared guidance, such as Iran’s indigenous Bavar-373 with reported EO/IR tracking or a derivative of the Russian S-300 system, then the incident demonstrates a known vulnerability: stealth reduces radar signature but does not eliminate thermal or visual signature. An aircraft flying at combat speed over hostile territory emits heat. Heat can be tracked by sensors that do not rely on radar. This is not a design failure. It is a physics constraint that the F-35 was always understood to face. The investigation will determine which story dominates. If radar detection occurred, the implications ripple through every F-35 operating nation’s tactical doctrine. If non-radar detection occurred, the implications are narrower and the countermeasures are already understood. The difference matters for every air force that has purchased or plans to purchase the aircraft. What the incident does not change is the operational tempo. The US has flown thousands of sorties over Iran since February 28. One aircraft took damage and landed. The sortie rate has not paused. Hegseth announced the largest strike package yet on the same day the F-35 was hit. The air campaign continues at scale. The IRGC will amplify the video as proof that Iranian air defences can challenge American stealth. The Pentagon will point to the pilot walking away as proof that the F-35 survives what kills other aircraft. Both claims contain truth. The propaganda war and the engineering investigation will run in parallel for months while the kinetic war continues in days. The pilot landed. The jet survived. The questions remain. And the strait is still closed. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

@gtconway3d @HuffPost Here is valued paper for the current President to appear on.

Don't suggest the obvious compromise here or the Secret Service will come visit you

@guyfelicella @danriccio_ Either that or Dan's flight stopped in Winnipeg, Dan made a quick run to the Sushi stand in the food court under Portage & Main, and got a California Roll and salmon sashimi to go. Recommended by Dan Murphy.

@danriccio_ Nooooo! The sushi was on the plane ride with you from Vancouver 😂

Had Toronto sushi for the first time since moving back from Vancouver… and yeah, that one’s coming off the takeout rotation for a while.

@mhmck @4AnimalLife You know, 'Ugly American' is an understatement for the current occupant of the White House.

Canadian PM Carney visited PM Takaichi in Tokyo, treated his host with respect, and signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Japan. Trump sat with Takaichi in the White House, blathered like an imbecile about Pearl Harbor, and damaged U.S. relations with Japan.

@stphnmaher @LeftHandStu Amazing how dangerous anyone can be with only a little bit of informaton.

Tweet of the month

@wonderofscience Science!

When a helicopter's rotors synchronize with the camera frame rate. 📽: Like tears in rain/CC-BY-SA-4.0

@mattjdh @PeterKellyBC Official chapter of Misogynists 'R Us!

The BC Conservatives:

@mark_slapinski It's Toronto.

This isn't Calgary, dumbass.

@dmacpher And an array of woodworking tools with a bushel of apples, enough for each and every member of His Majesty's Loyal Opposition.

I’m thankful the HoC doesn’t allow props or next Monday would be a sea of kettlebells me thinks 😆